Make My Own Website

Before you build a web page, you need to do a couple of things first. For one, you should have already decided on the purpose of your site and have selected either a domain name or chosen a name through a free service like Hubspot, Blogger or WordPress. As a starting point, the build my own website page can help a bit with that.

Next, if you decided to buy your own domain name (good choice by the way), then you should have already purchased it and hosted it through a web hosting company before you go much further. The host your own website page should help there as well.

Once that’s done, then the next step depends on whether you chose to go the free or paid hosting route.

First the free services:

If this is your first attempt at creating a web page, the free services like those mentioned above are certainly the easiest. But before you jump in with both feet … remember … if you build a web page on them (Blogger, WordPress, Hubspot, Squidoo or any other service like them), THEY own the site, not you. It’s ok if all you want is a personal page or two, or maybe a first go at an affiliate website, but be forewarned.

To be clear, I like these services. They are easy to work with, the help screens are great and you can literally have your website live in an hour or so if you already have photos or written content ready to post. In that regard they are unbeatable. In fact, I very much like these services for business, but as support sites, not as the main money site. More on that in other articles soon …

For now, just remember, use these services to help you learn how to build your own. That’s probably the best value they provide, at least it was to me. Build a web page or two (or a dozen if you like), and look at the html tab after you type in some content. That will show you what’s needed to make your text and photos look like they do on the page. If you also select “view”, then “page source” at the top of your browser, you’ll be able to see a lot of the underlying computer code (html) that makes it possible for your browser to understand what to display.

There really isn’t all that much more to tell with this option. I’ll provide a step-by-step set of instructions to build a web page on each of the major free services as blog posts shortly, but for now – just sign up to the service of your choice, get an account (takes a couple of minutes), follow the help that pretty much pulls you through the process and give it a try. I think you’ll be glad you did.

To Build a Web Page on your own hosted domain:

Ok, this is a little harder but don’t let that scare you off. Just keep plugging away and you’ll get it. Anyway, next to the above free services, a wordpress site is probably the next easiest to set up. Knowing some html will certainly help, but it isn’t absolutely necessary. Be watching for a blog series on setting up WordPress sites, from uploading the wordpress database structure on your host server with or without Cpanel, to setting up the program to put your site on the web, to creating your first post, to managing incoming comments and what to do with backups, hackers and spam.

In the meantime, if you have Cpanel it is really easy to get started. Before you build a web page, just click on the Fantastico button, select wordpress and – poof – it gets installed for you with a single click. From there, pick one of the default free themes (you’ll see when you get to that point that it’s already installed for you), then just build a web page or your first blog post using the help screens and you’ll do just fine.

A more difficult approach (especially if you have no experience with html) is a self-hosted, or straight html site. The first thing you’ll need is a template, and there are hundreds of them you’ll find on a Google search that you can get for free. Just pick one, download it and set it aside for a minute.

The next thing you’ll need is an FTP program. I recommend FileZilla. It’s free and it works great. I’ll cover starting an html site from scratch in another blog series soon as well, but if you’ve never had the opportunity to build a web page using straight html, php or dabbled in css and all the other alphabet soup strings of letters that symbolize code for web design … then I recommend doing some reading first. DON’T jump in and buy a service, or the promised holy grail for a web design consultant … just don’t!

Read a little. Ask questions, but don’t get overwhelmed by it all. There are a few things you need to know to be successful, but not at a cost of hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of somebody else’s help.

You really can build a web page, and turn that process into an entire website chock full of great content, interesting photos and superb graphics all on your own. Really! Just stay tuned and see …

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